June 7, 2007
They Probably Don’t Think about the Consequences at All
In China, ‘cutthroat capitalism’ often means cutting corners, by David Barboza
Cutting corners and producing fake goods is not just a legacy of China’s initial surge toward the free market three decades ago but is still woven into the fabric of the thriving Chinese industrial economy. It is driven by entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of a weak legal system, lax regulations and a business culture where bribery and corruption are rampant.
“This is cutthroat market capitalism. But the question has to be asked: Is this uniquely Chinese or is there simply a lack of regulation in the market?”
I think there’s probably something uniquely Chinese about this… if they don’t personally know the people they’re harming, then it’s OK. There’s no concept of sin here, or a fear of going to hell if you do something evil. I find the whole idea of “feeling guilty” is often lost on the Chinese.
One expression I frequently use is 你羞不羞? which is usually used when scolding kids, but you can also use it on deserving adults… it means “aren’t you ashamed?” Shame and guilt are two different things though; the Chinese feel shame (when they’re caught doing wrong), but they don’t feel guilt (as they’re doing wrong).
I’m interested to hear other people’s take on this; please leave a comment.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Although I agree there’s probably something uniquely Chinese about this, I think that it’s a learning process that most developing countries have to go through.
The Chinese may not have a concept of sin or a fear of going to hell, but the majority do believe in fate and karma.
I do think that they have an easier time justifying doing evil and ignoring guilt, because they believe in limited control over fate. ie. If I don’t rob this person, he’ll probably get robbed by another anyways.
It doesn’t help that their concept of karma is that things only get back at you in your next life. ie. If I rob this person, he’ll probably rob me in my next life. But who cares? I wouldn’t remember anything in my next life anyways.
I think they have to figure out the need for a stronger legal system, tighter regulations, and higher moral standards for themselves in their own time. Otherwise, even if they force the system, regulations, and standards, they simply wouldn’t stick.
It’s basically a cultural shift that has to happen over a few generations.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Hmmmm, I just started following Maoxian’s site. I think it is quite good, so thanks for all of your info sir! I am a B-747 Captain. I fly mostly throughout asia and the middle east. I spend 2 to 3 weeks overseas and about 1 to 2 weeks home in the U.S. My attitude towards other cultures has changed so much since I started flying there. I am so impressed with the respect and honor that most people have in those regions. Personally, I think corruption is just as rampant in the U.S.– maybe even more…..
June 7th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Today as I was coming to work in Beijing I saw a great illustrative example. As the cab I was in turned onto the small side street going to my building we were stopped by a large backup of cars. About 50 meters in front of us was a minor accident between a minivan and a car. The rules in China are that your vehicle must remain in the spot of the accident until the police arrive so the two cars were blocking the road. However, the road is quite wide and so there should have been enough room for cars to go around them in both directions. There was not enough room though because there was a black Audi parked on the right hand side of the road at the same spot as the accident. The driver of the Audi was cleaning his car with one of those floppy broom things. As a result only 1 car could go through at a time and cars in both directions were fighting to get through. The Audi driver just continued cleaning his car. If he had moved his car just another 50 meters or so down the road the problem would have been solved and traffic would have moved smoothly. But he did not, he ignored the whole thing while cleaning his car.
The drivers stuck in the traffic were absolutely meaningless to him because they are not relatives and not potentially beneficial non-relatives. You can see similar things 1000 times a day if you notice. Chinese have concepts of guilt and shame only to those within the sphere of importance to them (people who can directly effect them). For the most part, they are indifferent to the fate of those outside this sphere.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
ShaMao: The phrase “potentially beneficial non-relatives” made me laugh out loud… you should have become a lawyer.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
… to me, such a behaviour is due to the communist “culture” where the responsibility of individuals is asbent becasue a higher entity (the party) is supposed to take care of all things (a deresponsibilization, is that right?). Much like the behaviour of people from Eastern Europe from the former communist block.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Thanks for the blog, do you ever comment on the South African Markets?
June 7th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Where is GW’s guilt or shame? Tax structure, cronyism, dealmaking and more baised toward “potentially beneficial non-relatives”…
Wolfowitz at the world bank…
Is Dick Cheney chinese?
June 7th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
The behaviour being discussed is common in any culture and any country, especially in developing ones. I am sure many similar examples exist even in the US.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
If all the Chinese would go to Wikipedia and read what Immanuel Kant wrote about the “Categorical Imperative“, maybe China would be a better place. One does not have to believe in Hell to consider the common good of man.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Thanks for the comments, guys. I hope that it’s a “stage of development” thing, and a remnant of post-Communist “culture” (thanks Franz).
Rudi: no, I never comment on the South African markets because I know nothing about them (unlike the other things I know nothing about but comment on anyway).
drgood: thanks for the Kant recommendation… if the Chinese didn’t block Wikipedia, I’d go right over and read about it. ;-)
June 8th, 2007 at 12:22 am
The current TB news about a man who left the USA with TB resistant to drug treatment points to this universal trait - self-centered behavior - whether it is due to ‘lack of guilt’, social mores, years of poverty or ‘negligent’ corporate behavior (sending drugs out to the public without adequate testing) is your own best guess. I think developing countries have no corner on this market.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:23 am
I think bbc hit it right on the nose. The kind of behavior Maoxian illustrated is universal to mankind, and not limited to China or any “developing country”. Just because China may have different values does not mean it is in a “developmental stage”. We Americans may be more sophisticated in the ways of capitalism, but it is debatable whether or not we are further along in the ways of morality.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:07 am
This is a great topic. The “cutthroat market capitalism” has been shaped and formed by Chinese culture, continually evolving with the aid of foreign influence and world changes. It is also allowed to function and operate by the Chinese government. The government’s lack of concern about regulation allows controlled anarchy. Almost anything goes. The government’s non-policy also allows piracy to occur in the filming and gaming industry. Billions of dollars are lost every year. Microsoft has to sell 8 video games to break even for the pirated game consoles. Computer chips are even installed in the XBOX to prevent the pirated video games from being played. The question though is what is truly ethical and wrong. That has always been decided by the ruling fraction. America was stolen away from the Native American Indians, arms dealers took billions of dollars of military assets from the former U.S.S.R., and countries invade each other all the time for their assets such as Iraq invading Kuwait for their oil. Movies just out in the theatre show up online in a matter of days and sometimes before the release date. It is all about a cultures’ sociology and the norms that are practiced.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Bob,
Wolfowitz was appointed to World Bank president position because he is a Skull and Bones member along with George Bush. Robert Zoellick, another “beneficial non-relative”, is replacing him.
Dick Chaney goes back a long way in the good old boys club since Nixon was in office. We all know how Nixon used his presidential powers. Chaney’s old company of Halliburton is basically given a blank check for their service in Iraq now.
Erik Prince and Blackwater is also a classic example.
June 8th, 2007 at 9:06 am
It is interesting that a communist state have been capitalized to the point of “cut throat capitalism”.
Guess only from the grace of God.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Unfortunately I think you really need to live in China (and not in an expat enclave) for a few years to appreciate the scale. While this type of behavior may be common to post-communist and/or developing countries, it simply cannot be compared to the US. Similarly examples such as Wolfowitz and Cheney simply pale in comparison to the nepotism in practice in China where 75% of the mult-millionaires are the offspring of high officials.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
There are three words to decribe the difference .
law rule feeling (法 理 情)
In a traditional western country , people deal anything with the order : law rule feeling . For chinese, the ture is : feeling rule law . That means people will consider the relationship first when they face challenge and law is the last according the culture. It does need time and hard job to make progress.
June 8th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I think this observation is spot on. Its probably hard for people outside of the culture to understand, but I think one way to describe the phenomenon in China is on scales.
So lets assume that this disregard of people outside one’s social circle (DOPOO for short)can be measured on a scale of 1 - 10. In the US we have number of high profile cases where people exhibit DOPOO of pretty high level, say a 9. But in the general population maybe 15% exhibits such high DOPOO. The rest of the population is fairly aware of the others and exhibits DOPOO of maybe a 2 or 3.
In China, a higher, say 80%, of the population exhibits high DOPOO of say 7 or 8. In fact, you may even argue that the regular occurance of high DOPOO makes those extreme cases of DOPOO less noticeable to the average Chinese citizen.
P.S. I’m Chinese.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
In the so called civilized western culture they still have to escape from the Christ - cross hit with guilt tradition. Western people don’t like to here this but it is still a big part of the modern western culture. This is also an important basic difference between Western culture and others. Most of the other cultures are using shame. Seems like people just need something to hit with, especially when they intend to educate children.
June 8th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
I Do appreciate the site, thanks again. It would be nice to see some focus on the South African market
June 8th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
The social scientists call this sort of behavior “amoral familialism.” There was a guy (Edward Banfield) who studied farmers in Utah, and then studied farmers in Italy, and concluded that the farmers in Italy were so poor because they were unable to trust anybody outside their family, and for good reason. That’s also why there are no successful large businesses in Italy. By comparison, Germany and Japan enjoy high levels of trust and also have plenty of successful large companies. So for the people who are so pc and afraid to make distinctions, and who blandly declare that everybody in the world is a crook, no society is more cooperative than another: no.
June 9th, 2007 at 2:47 am
all i can say is that i will never knowingly eat anything from china. they really, really blew that whole pet food thing.
June 9th, 2007 at 7:12 am
bjk :> why would you argue that they are no successful large business in Italy ? it’s utterly counter factual
June 11th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I haven’t done much research as to whether or not Confucianism contains anything that teaches Chinese to disrespect the law or disregard other peoples feelings, I’m sure it doesn’t. I agree with most of the other comments on here, but one thing I think nobody mentioned was that with the establishment of communist rule and the destruction of religious/moral teaching i.e confucianism, buddhism and daoism namely, the Chinese people lost a foundation of general law and morality. The last 20 years, with the economic reforms etc. the rules of the jungle have sort of emerged, competition is ruthless and if you want to succeed and improve your life sympathy is not going to help you at all. Everybody is out for their own. Of course you are going to protect your immediates but as for the others, they are struggling just like you. As an example, if I complain to my dad, who grew up in India, about something unfair or hard in life he will tell me to pull myself together and get on with it. If I tell my mum, who grew up in England, she will console me and sympathise with me. I think the impact of the competitive environment that mainland Chinese grow up in sometimes alludes us. I still have sympathy … hehe
June 11th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Communist ideology seeks to abolish ownership. Ownership makes people responsible. I think that this is at the root of what we are talking about.
The Categorical Imperative has something to do with it, too. I do not take someones property, because I would not want my property taken. Communal property, on the other hand, does not belong to anyone in particular and can be taken with far less moral distress.
June 12th, 2007 at 8:22 am
One thing is capitalism and a very different thing is the late stage degenerate kind of capitalism that prevails in the USA now where corporate malfescence is rife and big business is in cahoots with the federal government and congress to drive competitors away.
June 12th, 2007 at 8:46 am
chimpy: China must be in late stage degenerate capitalism because corporate malfeasance is rife and big business is in cahoots with the government to drive competitors away. ;-)
June 12th, 2007 at 8:59 am
HaHa sure, but China’s more like the wild west i.e. it’s emerging capitalism, there never was regulatory oversight etc. Unlike the USA that prouds itself as the best place to do business anywhere bla bla bla.
June 12th, 2007 at 9:00 am
…oops, missed the wink until after I posted :)
June 12th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Ah yes, the all-important emoticons. 8^)
June 12th, 2007 at 9:11 am
LOL BTW you might remember me from the old ispec site ;) I’m Carlos :) I might be you earliest reader in here :^) GREAT Blog!!
June 12th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Oh, hey Carlos, I always thought you used a different handle… didn’t realize you are “chimpy.”
June 12th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Sorry, I should and will use “Carlos” :) Regards!
September 14th, 2008 at 5:21 am
An interesting book is “Way That Are Dark - The Truth About China” by Ralph Townsend first published in the 1930s. Here’s the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Ways-that-are-dark-truth/dp/B0006QY4WS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221340719&sr=8-1
From a review:
“”Ways That Are Dark, the Truth About China” was written by a former diplomat in our foreign service in China in 1933.
The author informs us that the Chinese have a system of values quite different from those prevalent in Western civilization.
For those who would disagree, it must be remembered that the Chinese have a recorded history of 30 or 40 centuries, and these characteristics don’t appear to have changed much over that span.”
September 14th, 2008 at 7:48 am
@anon: Thanks for the recommendation; I always appreciate tips on books, especially “politically incorrect” ones.